Reply #13: Journalists should have no friends -- J. Pulitzer

[splat]

Recounts provide evidence. Why would journalists -- whose "fifth estate" function includes the government watchdog function, blithely accept a machine's count without seeking independent corroboration? It's their job to be skeptical, curious, and assume that scoundrels are afoot.

Why assume, with no proof, that the exit polls are wrong? Maybe the machines are wrong.

The mere possiblility of insecure servers and anomalous results should send up alarms. Unless they have no idea how machines can be hacked (My machine had a printer!) or are cowed by the White House.

If they won't ask the hard questions, why do they, without a single recount to back them up, balk at covering a citizens' movement to make sure our voting is fair.

The whole world is watching. If we can't prove we can elect our own leaders cleanly, why should they expect any more from us in Iraq?

If it does turn out that the vote has been tampered with, how silly are they going to look if they've taken some experts' word that everything is just fine without a shred of proof?

Nobody's opinion matters here. Only a hand recount will tell if the total on the machines is inflated; if it is, investigating how it got that way is part of their job.

Maybe they'd rather cover nothing lest their election analyses turn out to be merely the improvisations of the hoodwinked.

The blogs (i.e. uppity citizen publishers like us) are doing their job because they are not doing it.

Finally, if it turns out that the election was altered at the server level, there's a Pulitzer to be had for saving the republic. Is the Times interested in being in the running?

p.s. anybody fact-checked that study? Seems to me they assigned the Bush vote to Kerry in a very blue state, Rhode Island, maybe, and then said it was outside the margins. It's a footnote.